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Ahh... there's nothing like rolling through an MMO for the first time. Sure, there's a lot of folks out there who had their first taste with UO, but I'd wager that for a lot of Goodjers, EQ was their first experience with this engrossing, addicting, and life-altering genre.

So who played? What did you play? Any favorite memories? How deep did your addiction run? Let's remember this classic (that's still running to this day!) and reminisce about corpse runs to Crushbone or those epic raids for ph4t le3wtz!

(Excuse me if the kids these days no longer use terminology like phat lewtz or l33t. I've been out of the game for a while now. )

Oh the memories. I was a high elf wizzy on erollisi marr. It was the name generator that came up with nuean, which I have used in every game since.

I had a lot of good times in that game.

Do you remember Tradewinds, The Travel Guard, Fellowship of Honour or Crimson Eternity? All guilds I was in on EMarr. The name generator was also 95% responsible for Teneman, I think I tweaked a letter or two before accepting it.

Crimson Eternity does ring a bell. But its been so long, plus my guild was never a high end raiding one. we pretty much did our own thing. It was guardians of antiquity, although I'll be shocked if you have heard of it.

Gumbie wrote:

"soldiers are teh easy, you just click the mouse and shoot rawkets and the kills pile up".

Psych wrote:

I think that is the only time I have seen an uber-Sniper and instead of laughing, run for my life.

I hated the forced downtime, in principle, but looking back on it now I realize how many good friends I made (and how much we talked to each other) because of it.

I guess original EQ was a lightning strike of mixed pain and awesome-sauce that will never strike again. *Sigh* So many good memories, though. So many more atmospheric, hilarious, organic memories than WoW or any other MMO.

I hated the forced downtime, in principle, but looking back on it now I realize how many good friends I made (and how much we talked to each other) because of it.

Yeah, it sounds strange on paper, but forcing social interaction through mandatory downtime actually worked in EQ's case. Like you, I made a number of good friends that way and actually got to know them vs. a quick run, and "kthxbye."

And back then, folks wouldn't just quit out of a group for no good reason because unless you were a porter, you had nowhere to go!

Maybe I'm a masochist but I miss the unforgiving nature of EQ. On second thought maybe I just miss the simplicity, for the better or worse.
No bound items. Immensely powerful buffs on the lowest level characters. Corpse runs. Corpse runs for other people. Having to hoof it all over the place. The risk of leaving something on the ground to transfer items to another character if you weren't careful. And dying really really sucked. Maybe I should sub to Vanguard.

I played a female monk on a pvp server, because hey, what's less threatening than an unarmed girl. Still, every pass at an enemy got them 4 swings, a kick to the head, and a potential disarm. Those were the days.

I thought it was a lot of fun to tweak a toon in EQ. I remember the first toon I tweaked was a ranger: I gave her dual Ykesha's (the ULTIMATE weapon in its time), and a nice set of armor, each slot chosen carefully with whatever I could afford.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

Maybe I'm a masochist but I miss the unforgiving nature of EQ. On second thought maybe I just miss the simplicity, for the better or worse.
No bound items. Immensely powerful buffs on the lowest level characters. Corpse runs. Corpse runs for other people. Having to hoof it all over the place. The risk of leaving something on the ground to transfer items to another character if you weren't careful. And dying really really sucked. Maybe I should sub to Vanguard.

I played a female monk on a pvp server, because hey, what's less threatening than an unarmed girl. Still, every pass at an enemy got them 4 swings, a kick to the head, and a potential disarm. Those were the days.

Maybe I'm a masochist but I miss the unforgiving nature of EQ. On second thought maybe I just miss the simplicity, for the better or worse.
No bound items. Immensely powerful buffs on the lowest level characters. Corpse runs. Corpse runs for other people. Having to hoof it all over the place. The risk of leaving something on the ground to transfer items to another character if you weren't careful. And dying really really sucked. Maybe I should sub to Vanguard.

Exactly. That element of risk is just missing in WoW and the few other current MMO's I've played. There's just not as much excitement exploring new zones when you know that no matter what happens you can just take a spirit rez. And that's just exploring regular zones. When you know that an instance wipe can be 'undone' by simply zoning back in and trying again you lose that bone chilling fear that was ever present in any Plane of Hate raid, where a wipe meant literally hours of sneaking through the zone naked to get your stuff back, or if you were lucky typing "/consent monk" and waiting hours for the poor monk to drag all your corpses back to zone.

Not to mention the ultimate. "Ding!" Welcome to level 50. You have died, welcome to level 49. "D'oh!"

Maybe I'm a masochist but I miss the unforgiving nature of EQ. On second thought maybe I just miss the simplicity, for the better or worse.
No bound items. Immensely powerful buffs on the lowest level characters. Corpse runs. Corpse runs for other people. Having to hoof it all over the place. The risk of leaving something on the ground to transfer items to another character if you weren't careful. And dying really really sucked. Maybe I should sub to Vanguard.

Exactly. That element of risk is just missing in WoW and the few other current MMO's I've played. There's just not as much excitement exploring new zones when you know that no matter what happens you can just take a spirit rez. And that's just exploring regular zones. When you know that an instance wipe can be 'undone' by simply zoning back in and trying again you lose that bone chilling fear that was ever present in any Plane of Hate raid, where a wipe meant literally hours of sneaking through the zone naked to get your stuff back, or if you were lucky typing "/consent monk" and waiting hours for the poor monk to drag all your corpses back to zone.

Not to mention the ultimate. "Ding!" Welcome to level 50. You have died, welcome to level 49. "D'oh!"

I would challenge the developers to go beyond such tricks as horrific time sinks to duplicated "risk"

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

It's definitely a difficult line to walk, and one which EQ certainly did not walk correctly. But I think I prefer the "time sinks" of EQ1's risks to WoW's bland guaranteed safety and victory (I'm talking about the leveling process and the overall world zones, not end game raiding). I just wanted EQ's time sinks to be reasonable, and not cruel in a petty way. For instance, crafting: it was a painful time sink, in which you had to click individual materials one by one and drag to your container, then click combine, over and over. You may not even get a skill up. That was a huge time sink. It may not be the best system one could dream up, but I might be willing to live with it. What I absolutely hated, though, was the sucker punch to the nuts of having some non-trivial probability to lose multi-hundred plat components in the poof of a combine click, even when I was supposedly of high enough skill for it to be "trivial". That was just stupid design. On the other hand, I liked the hill giants and griffons and ice bone skellies running around low level zones, and I liked not having in-game maps. I even liked having to run everywhere and take boats, though I thought the boats should run a little more frequently.

Dark elf, baby! I grooved on looking swanky in my outfit while walking through my racial city's psychedelic landscape. I joined a guild called "Hell's Highwaymen". Nicest group of evil elves you could ever meet... ironic, no?

Debating is continuing a conversation just to prove who's right. Discussion is continuing a conversation for the purpose of a solution. -LaTisha B.

Dark elf, baby! I grooved on looking swanky in my outfit while walking through my racial city's psychedelic landscape. I joined a guild called "Hell's Highwaymen". Nicest group of evil elves you could ever meet... ironic, no?

Neriak was so awesome. Some real creativity at work there. I loved my DESK! (dark elf shadow knight) - looked hot in red plate armor, with the little faceplate with devil horns on it.

Dark elf, baby! I grooved on looking swanky in my outfit while walking through my racial city's psychedelic landscape. I joined a guild called "Hell's Highwaymen". Nicest group of evil elves you could ever meet... ironic, no?

Neriak was so awesome. Some real creativity at work there. I loved my DESK! (dark elf shadow knight) - looked hot in red plate armor, with the little faceplate with devil horns on it.

I was thinking about Neriak recently and how it captured my imagination. The dark element, weird symbols - almost like graffiti on the walls - and the mystique of the dark elves was just ultra-cool. Starting out as a caster and watching the trainers and other NPC's cast random spells was also fun to watch.

After a year of 10th anniversary-induced EQ nostalgia, I lost my mind and resubscribed Friday. Spent Friday night logging in to all my characters and scratching my head as to what does what, and being overwhelmed by nostalgia looking at all my gear and spellbooks. Man, the simple sounds of bags opening/closing, completing a task ("da dun du da do da DAH!"), and of course "DING!" really took me back, as did the sounds of spells casting. They changed the spell graphics, though, and I don't like them as much as the old ones. I didn't like the looks of the new player models back when they debuted around Luclin, but they don't seem too bad, except the ogres and trolls - yee-uck! The weird part though was that on my druid, the wolf form run animation was paired with what seemed like the sound of my human running, which was off-putting.

Anyway, I had no idea what was going on with any of my chars, so Saturday I started a new High Elf Mage in the tutorial (Mines of the Gloomingdark). Took about 2 or 3 hours to get to level 10, yow. Used to take a week+ LOL. But in true EQ full-contact brutality fashion, there was a quest (it has quests and a quest log, now, at least in the new areas. No glowing, floating punctuation, though) that did not mention needing a group (conspicuously next to the one specifically labeled as "GROUP") that was impossible solo even with an overpowered pet class at the level intended. Fortunately, I was able to group up with someone and complete it. This is surprising because the number of players around lower than level 80 is about 2 serverwide. Seriously, I spent some time traveling around the old world zones with my druid, and every single zone I went into I was the only person there. Was kind of creepy.

The biggest problems for me were getting used to the 10 year old 3D engine and how to control it, and the UI. Both are definitely past their prime. But I had a blast farting around the zones and killing stuff. EQ still has the edge in terms of lore and sheer amount of stuff in the game. I'll probably spend some time seeing how far I can get soloing with mercs. If anyone else is insane enough to resubscribe or check it out, send me a tell (somehow I think you can even do this across servers or even across SOE games? or something). I'm on Prexus, main chars are Phaedrax (hope to get back just Phaedra, grrr), Lethia, Khoram, Synda, and uh what the hell did I name my new mage... Nemmin? Something like that. Probably can just do a /who all 1-70 and I'll be the only guy listed heh.

Yah, you can send tells across servers, but I don't remember the format. Its been many years since I played and don't even remember my account information or what server I was on. At this point, I will not resubscribe, as I wish to remain married.

Yah, you can send tells across servers, but I don't remember the format. Its been many years since I played and don't even remember my account information or what server I was on. At this point, I will not resubscribe, as I wish to remain married.

I resubbed, but without other players on there really isn't much point in playing because everything in EQ was so group centric. I did get a kick out of making a new Paladin and trying to make his newbie gear, though.

I might actually try EQ again if it were cheaper, I just can't see spending $15 a month when there are so many other choices out there. I hate you guys for making me consider going back to my roots though

I forgot how long combat in EQ takes solo with anything other than a druid/wizard/necro, even with the mercs. I took my 40/41 SK to Rathe to make some plat with a cleric merc to heal, and day-um, fights take a loooooonnnnnggg time compared to what I've become used to in more recent MMOs. I'm talking like 2+ minutes probably (though I haven't timed them). And these are blue con hill giants. Granted I don't have the best gear (darkforge and a moss) but wow, I had forgotten exactly how serious EQ was WoW has extremely simplified MMO combat expectations.

You're right, it's probably not worth $15 a month, but I'm just dinking around reliving the memories. If I had a group of friends to play casually with it probably would be worth $15 a month. There is a metric ton of content in this thing, after 10 years and 16 expansions. And while the zones from original EQ (with a handful of exceptions) all retain their original 1999 textures (2 meter long pixel textures!), the new zones I've seen from the last 5 years or so look pretty good, not AoC or Aion good but I'd say somewhere between WoW and Lotro.

EQ was my first love as well - and what an affair it was. For some reason it seems that only the good times stick in memory.
Servere was Innoruke. Had many toons but the one I remember best is a female elf (high?) Druid named ... Wilma. I guess my toon names have not gotten any better

The first experience in the elf zone and I just can't remember the name of the first dungeon with the orcs but I still scramble in any game when someone shouts "Train to Zone"

EQ was my first love as well - and what an affair it was. For some reason it seems that only the good times stick in memory.
Servere was Innoruke. Had many toons but the one I remember best is a female elf (high?) Druid named ... Wilma. I guess my toon names have not gotten any better

The first experience in the elf zone and I just can't remember the name of the first dungeon with the orcs but I still scramble in any game when someone shouts "Train to Zone"

-X

I had a toon named Fliegenscheisst on Sollusek Ro (the unofficial German server), yeah I was a little cranky when I made him. Fliegen means flying and scheisst is, um, poo yeah let's go with the word poo.

The first experience in the elf zone and I just can't remember the name of the first dungeon with the orcs but I still scramble in any game when someone shouts "Train to Zone"

I'll never forget that zone; it's called Crushbone. Always loved storming that castle and facing off against Lord Crush, his horde of Legionaires, Oracles, Slavers as well as the Dark Elf ambassador Dvinn and taking his treacherous heart as a prize. I spent way too much time in that zone.